Cristina Luca Boico

Bianca Marcusohn was born on 8 August 1916 in Botoșani, Romania to Luisa (née Segal) and Isidor Marcusohn.[1][2] Her family, which included an older sister, Hermina, belonged to the assimilated Jewish middle-class.[1][3] After completing her secondary education at Carmen Sylva High School in Botoşani, Marcusohn moved to Bucharest to undertake medical studies. She joined the Students' Democratic Front, an organization aligned with the Romanian Communist Party and wrote articles for journals on the international anti-fascist movement. She was a friend of Lucien Goldmann and was influenced by his ideas.[3] In 1937, after being expelled for her political activities, Marcusohn left Romania to continue her studies at the Sorbonne.[3][4] At the approach of the Nazi's the university was closed and per a posted notice, she was allowed to graduate by taking her final tests at any university offering them. Marcusohn made her way to Toulouse, where she completed her examinations and received her certificate in Natural Sciences in June 1940.[5]

Marcusohn began working in the marine biology laboratory of Édouard Chatton in Banyuls-sur-Mer, but by September had decided to return to Paris.[5] Once there, she contacted the Romanian affiliates of the French Communist Party and reconnected with the communist movement.[3] Taking in mathematics students, she worked as a tutor and was eventually offered a post with Georges Tessier to translate journal articles to French for researchers at the Caisse nationale de la recherche scientifique, forerunner to the French National Center for Scientific Research.[5] She participated in the 1940 demonstrations to protest the arrest of Paul Langevin[4] and was arrested but quickly released.[6]

In 1941, Marcusohn joined the Organisation Spéciale—Main-d'Œuvre Immigrée (OS-MOI),[4] the armed group of the Immigrant Labor Force,[7] using the name Monique as a disguise.[8] In 1942 when the OS-MOI merged with two other groups to form the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans—Main-d'Œuvre Immigrée (FTP-MOI),[7] Marcusohn changed her name again, to Cristina Luca, and became and intelligence officer in the resistance.[3][4] With the knowledge of her professors, Luca funneled stolen chemicals from the biology laboratory at the Sorbonne to the partisans.[4][8] She lost her translating job in 1942 and went to work full time, spying for the FTP-MOI.[5] In 1944, she was assigned to combat duty for the entire north of France and participated in several partisan attacks.[4]

At the end of the war, Luca returned to Romania in March 1945.[3] Between 1945 and 1947, she worked in the Ministry of Information and then went to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where she worked at the Romanian embassy as a press-attaché for a year.[9] Because of the Tito–Stalin Split, Luca was recalled to Romania and began working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in charge of the press department. In 1949, she married Mihail Boico (born Rosner), a military officer in command of troops on the border.[3] Shortly after the marriage, Stalin began targeting veterans of the Spanish Civil War and those who had been involved in the French Resistance,[10] placing both Boico and her husband, who was known as Bibi, under suspicion.[3][11] Boico was dismissed from her job in June, 1952 and Bibi was purged from his position in the Interior Ministry that same fall.[12] Boico was assigned to a minor position in the Grigore Antipa National Museum of Natural History.[3]

Disillusioned by the party, after 1956, Boico no longer participated in political activities, concentrating instead on her work in history and science. In the 1960s, she began working as the editor of the Scientific Publishing House and later taught courses on Marxism at the Politehnica University of Bucharest. Publishing a few book introductions and journal articles, she increasingly found herself at odds with the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu. In 1987, she left Romania to visit her children in Paris and chose not to return.[3] She began publishing again in France and wrote such works as Les Hommes qui ont porté Ceaușescu au pouvoir, which has been called by Vladimir Tismăneanu "the most comprehensive and illuminating analysis" of the rise of Ceaușescu and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej to the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party.[13]

Boico died on 17 August 2002 in Paris.[2] In 2014, a French miniseries, Résistance, was released about the young people involved in the French Resistance during the war. One of the characters in the series was based on Boico's experiences and was played by Romanian actress Cristina Flutur.[14]